REVIEW: (Watch Me) Unmask You by Avril Ashton

_______________________________________________________________Blurb

With one tug the thread unravels, and a world built on lies will come tumbling down

Too many bodies. Rivers of blood. Elias Kote sees them all in his sleep. Only the love of his husband and daughter keeps him alive and fighting. This contract killer is exhausted and weighed down with all the lies he tells every day. Who he is. What he does. How he came to have all he has. Elias can attest to nothing remaining hidden forever, but his secrets, when they do drop, shatters everything. Everyone. And leaves him scrambling to make his family whole again.

Ten years together. Three legally wed. One with their daughter. And in one night Lucky Mousasi’s world just… stops. What he thought was a random home invasion turns into way more. Masked men not only brutalize him, but they come armed with knowledge about Lucky, his husband, and the life he thought he knew. It seems nothing is coincidental, certainly not meeting and falling in love with Elias. Bruised, battered, heart ripped open, Lucky walks away.

An intimate rival will stop at nothing to neutralize the threat Elias poses, and the life he built out of guilt and desperation becomes collateral damage. When Lucky takes their daughter and disappears, Elias goes on a rampage. He will get his family back, but first he’s on an elimination mission. One bullet at a time.______________________________________________________________________

My Review

(Watch Me) Unmask You is the third book of the Run This Town series, which is a sequel/spin-off of the highly recommended Brooklyn Sinners series.

I’m really sorry for giving it one star.

But I just can’t see where the love comes from.

Lucky and Elias have chemistry – I can give them that. But their whole relationship is based on lies, dark secrets, Lucky’s infatuation on Elias, Elias’s stalkerish behavior, and the aggressive and arrogant way he claims ownership over Lucky’s heart.

And I am supposed to believe that this is love.

The book is divided into two parts: the first half (up to 43%) is about the past: how they met, their painful and unsatisfying random encounters in the following years, and finally, how they get together.

It is half of the story, but it still feels like an extremely long prologue.

The second part is set in the present: Lucky and Elias are together for ten years now and have a little daughter. From this point, it is obvious what’s going to happen: Elias’s past is going to bite him in the ass, they’ll fight, then make it up. Annoyingly, it was like a soap opera: all the revealed connections between the characters, oh god, they were just too melodramatic.

CharactersElias
I really despised Elias. And not because of his ‘occupation’ but his behavior toward Lucky.

I just didn’t get where Lucky’s infinite trust in him came from. Elias was creepy.

Lucky
He was cute at first, and I really liked him, but as the story progressed, I felt him kind of a pushover. I often wished he was like this:

But instead he was like a personal groupie of Elias.

The erotic scenes are very creative, but the emotions are not as present and intense as in the previous books of the series. Scorching hot sex scenes don’t make an impressive portrayal of emotions.

Lucky’s forgiveness comes easily and without real explanation; the happy ending is very sudden and baseless.

All in allIt is really sad, actually, it was the first Avril Ashton story I didn’t like.